But you will say that I have ventured nothing like proof, of the
paradoxical affirmation propounded a short while ago, as to the
_Tuath-de-danaans_ having been mentioned, by all Eastern writers, in
connection with Persia; and yet unnoticed, the while, by themselves, not
less than unheeded by their readers?
True: I but awaited the opportunity which has just arrived.
Are you not aware, then, how that all Oriental writers, when referring to
Budha, who was born at Maghada, in South Bahar, state that he was the son
of _Suad-dha-dana_? And have I not already shown you that _Suadh_ and
_Tuath_ were but disguises of each other, and both resolvable into Budh?
Those first components, therefore, in each being the same, look at the
entire compound words, _Tuath-de-danaan_, and _Suad-dha-dana_, and are not
the rest, also, infallibly identical?
Admitting this, you reply, how could they, in that early age, make their
way to Ireland? which, from its extreme position, must have been the very
last place they would have thought of!
If the question refers to the route pursued, I decline its solution, as
not necessary for my design. “A piece of sugar, or a morsel of pepper, in
a neglected corner of a village inn, would be a certain proof,” says
Heeren, “of the trade with either Indies, even if we possessed no other
evidences of the commerce of the Dutch and English with those countries.”
And when I have already made the coincidences between the two Irans and
their inhabitants, their forms of worship, their language and mode of
life, to be historical axioms, I surely cannot be expected to waste labour
upon such a trifle, which sinks into nothing against _evidences_ of the
actual fact.[277]
But if the length of the voyage be the obstacle insinuated, then would I
find some difficulty to--do what?--keep my muscles grave: as if, forsooth,
the adventurous sons of man could only, slowly and imperceptibly, and like
so many ants pushing a load before them, introduce themselves, inch by
inch, and in measured succession, into the diversified terraqueous globe
spread abroad for their enjoyment!--when we have direct demonstration that
such was far from having been the case in the instance of a colony which,
starting from Tyre, and leaving behind on all sides the most inviting and
delicious countries, planted itself down, perhaps from the mere spirit of
romance, in the circumscribed little island of Cadiz, long before Carthage
or Utica had existence even in name!
No, sir; we must not be so fond of derogating from the ancients all
participation in those embellishments which promote society. Asia was the
cradle of the whole human race; and thence, as its population overflowed,
migratory herds in different states of civilisation, and with different
forms of religious culture, poured in their successive colonies with
multitudinous inundation into the other continental lands; but with more
zeal, and with stronger preference, into those compact little nests which
have been significantly denominated the “Isles of the Gentiles.”
Vessels rode over the briny surges with as proud a canvas as now receives
the gale.[278] The model of the ark would be lesson sufficient to instruct
an enterprising generation in the science of naval architecture: and we
may well suppose that, of all pursuits cultivated by human art, this would
have occupied the very foremost regard by a people just rescued, through
its salutary instrumentality, from the desolating scourge of an
all-swallowing abyss.
“Well, then, at all events,”--I fancy I hear you exclaim,--“you admit the
story of the _deluge_?”
Certainly; and that of _Noah_, and the _ark_, and the _dove_, and the
_raven_. But did I not, also, concede the story of the _giants_, and of
the _serpent_? of the _sons of God_, and of the _tree of knowledge_? Nay,
_have I not put the truth of those particulars beyond the possibility of
scepticism_, much more of _denial_? But, believe me, that the _liquid_
which composed this “deluge” was more of the colour of _claret_ than it
was of _water_;--that there was no more of _wood_ or _timber_ in the
construction of this “ark” than there was in that of the “tree of
knowledge”--that those two latter were congenial and correspondent to each
other,--in their configuration and intention,--and that _flesh_ and
_blood_ were the elements of which they were both composed.
“For all that meets the bodily sense, I deem
Symbolical, one mighty alphabet
For infant minds------”
Could the coincidence of measure[279] between the great Egyptian _pyramid_
at its base, and that of the Noachic _ark_, in ancient cubits,[280] have
been accidental, do you imagine? And if not, what community of purpose, do
you think, had been subserved by such numerical analogy?
The _triangle_, in the old world, was a sacred form. It represented the
properties--capacity and dilatation--of the _female_ symbol. Lucian, in
his _Auction_, states the following dialogue as having occurred between
Pythagoras and a purchaser, viz.:--
PYTH. How do you reckon?
PUR. One, two, three, four.
PYTH. Do you see? What you conceive _four_, these are _ten_; and a perfect
_triangle_, and our _oath_.
Now, Pythagoras, though a Samian, was educated in Egypt; and the religious
mysteries, with which he had been there imbued, are what is so profanely
ridiculed by this infidel scoffer.
It is not my province to justify the ceremonial of the Egyptians, any
further than as indicative of gratitude to the Godhead; but the reflection
must suggest itself to every observant mind, that they are never called
_idolaters_ in any part of the Pentateuch; and Plutarch, in addition,
_positively asserts_ that “they had inserted nothing into their worship
without a reason,--nothing merely fabulous,--nothing superstitious; but
their institutions have reference either to morals or something useful in
life, and bear a beautiful resemblance, many of them, to some _facts_ in
_history_, or some _appearance_ in _nature_.”
If we investigate the secret of this Pythagorean asseveration, we shall
find that the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, thrice joined, and touching each other,
as it were, in three angles, in this manner--
[Illustration]
constitute an equilateral _triangle_, and amount also, in calculation, to
_ten_. While the _inward_ mystery, couched under its figure, embraced _all
that was solemn in religion and in thought_, being, in fact, the index of
_male_ and _female_ united--the unit, in the centre, standing for the
Lingam.
Look now at the form of the great Egyptian pyramid; and is it not
precisely that of the above triangle? Is there not, also, an _aperture_
into it, about the middle as here?[281] And when to all, we add the
notion of _wells_ of water withinside, is not the demonstration complete,
that the goddess of the _Lotos_, the soft promoter of _desire_, the
arbitress of _man_, and the compeer of the _angels_, was the honoured
object of its symbolical erection?[282]
In 1 Pet. iii. 20, it is asserted that only “eight persons” were preserved
in the ark. Let us suppose them to have been Noah and _his_ wife, with his
three sons and _their_ wives. At a comparatively short interval after the
date assigned to this event,--at most but 352 years,--on Abraham’s arrival
in the land of Egypt, we find a flourishing kingdom, an organised police,
a systematic legislature, and comprehensive institutions, diffused over
its surface. All the other parts of the world, we must be ready to
presume, if not equally enlightened, were, at least, as populous; and I
put it to your good sense to decide, whether _eight_ individuals could,
within that period, not only procreate so plentifully as to replenish the
whole earth, but enlighten it, additionally, with such a coruscation of
science, as no subsequent era has been since able to eclipse?
Indeed, the Scriptures themselves give us, elsewhere, to understand that
St. Peter did not correctly interpret this history. “Come thou,” says Gen.
vii. 1, “and _all thy house_, into the ark!” This gracious invitation, at
so critical a juncture, would have been too welcome a proffer to be lost
sight of by anyone who could make it available; and must not we suppose
that the _domestics_ to whom the extension was addressed, with their
several dependants and collateral offspring, would have been glad and
happy to grasp at it with delight?
But the name of the type itself is worth a hundred deductions from
equivocal premises. The _coffer_ of the law, the _coffin_ of Joseph, the
_money chest_ of the temple, are all severally translated _ark_, and
recorded in Hebrew by the word ןרוא _aron_: but the “_ark_ of Noah”[283]
and Moses’s “ark of bulrushes”[284] are peculiarly designated, תבת
_Thebit_, or תבה _tebah_.[285]
What is the meaning of these mysterious terms?
“Quo spectanda modo, quo sensu credis, et ore?”
As the _Tau_ of the Hebrews is, indifferently, in power, _T_ and _Th_,
_Thebit_ has as good a right to be spelled with, as without, an _h_ at the
end of it,--and, indeed, a better right, considering the elements whereof
it is compounded. _Thebith_, then, is the proper and true sound, and the
mystery of its import I thus unravel.
Its first syllable, _The_, signifies _sacred_ or consecrated;[286] and
since the letters _b_ and _p_ are commutable--_bith_ is the same as
_pith_, that is, _Cteis_ or _Yoni_. The words _The-bith_, then, together,
in all the attraction of truth, intimate the _consecrated Cteis_; or the
_sacred Yoni_![287]
But _Pith_, itself, is only a _conversion of Fidh_, the initial letters
_P_ and _F_ being always interchangeable, and not more so than the
penultimates _t_ and _d_. And _Fidh_, in its abstract and original
position, such as we have early seen it, is _masculine_, the plural of
_Budh_, conveying variously the significations of _Lingams_, _trees_, and
_bulrushes_. Here, however, where it is _feminine_, its sex _reversed_,
and the _anatomy_ of _nature_ pourtrayed by the _physics_ of _language_,
the idea of the _bulrushes_ alone presents itself; and the _basket_ in
which Moses was _saved_ from the waters, and which was made of such reeds,
was appropriately denominated by this mysterious symbol, as a type of the
_virginity_ in which the Messiah was to be incarnated, not less than of
the _redemption_ which was to accrue from His sufferings.
Another stage has been thus advanced; and lo! the beautiful union which
subsists, _as to design_, between the results of our discoveries, and the
consoling assurances of pure Christianity!
Let us now proceed a little farther in this course--
“Sanctos ausi recludere fontes,”[288]
and connect these truths with the _Tuath_-de-danaans and the
_Pish_-de-danaans.
“Noah was a just man,” observes the scriptural historian, “and _perfect in
his generations_; and Noah walked with God.”[289]
The name of this patriarch implies literally a _boat_: the character
assigned him is not so well understood.
To succeed in the investigation we must have recourse to the context: and
here the first thing that strikes us is the observation “that the earth
was _corrupt_ before God, and filled with _violence_; for all _flesh_ had
corrupted his way upon the earth.”[290]
A passage in the New Testament will be the best comment upon this subject,
where the patience of God with the iniquities of mankind being at length
exhausted, it is said, that He “gave them over to a _reprobate mind_,” “to
dishonour their own bodies between themselves.”[291]
But Noah did not participate in those unhallowed abominations, and he
accordingly “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”[292]
We now, therefore, see the propriety of the name assigned to his
_ark_;[293]--and the intimation of approval conveyed by the divine command
of “Come thou and all thy house into it,” was but another form of the
injunction elsewhere conveyed, to the same effect, in the words, “Be ye
fruitful and multiply.”[294]
_Noah_, then, and _Kaiomurs_[295] were one and the same person, the
reformer of the human species, and the first monarch of the
Pish-de-danaan dynasty. _Yavana_ was another name appropriated to him, and
equivalent with _Noah_, excepting only that the former is literal, and the
latter figurative. An advantage, however, arises from this difference, for
when we know that _Yavana_ means the _yoni_, and _Noah_ a _boat_, and that
both were equally characteristic of the same individual character, we
conclude that the latter denomination was but the symbol of the
former--that, in fact, it was the _lunar boat_,[296] or the _crescent_,
the _concha Veneris_, and the type of _comfort_[297] that was veiled under
the mystery of this ambiguous device.
[Illustration]
This fact once explained, you have the immediate solution of those
“semicircular implements” so universal throughout this island, and which
Ledwich acknowledges “have created more trouble to the antiquarians to
determine their use, than all the other antiquities put together.”
These are all made of the finest gold, and, as emblems of the _yoni_,
which was the Raman _palladium_, used to have been worn as _breast_-plates
by the priests and sovereigns. They would sometimes, also, exhibit them as
ornaments to the _head_-dress: and when so designed the two terminating
angles used to have been furnished with circular cups, whereby they would
better adhere to the part: of such, likewise, we have the following
specimen.[298]
[Illustration]
_Yun_ is the usual mode of pronouncing _Yavana_; and as the veneration of
posterity for the virtues of this legislator, at a moment when vice had
threatened a general decay,[299] led them to consider him a god, he hence
obtained the prefix of _Deo_ or _Deu_, which along with that of _Cali_,
whose champion he showed himself, make up the romantic, emblematic and
nominal representation of _Deucaliyun_.[300]
“Safe o’er the main of life the _vessel_ rides,
When _passion_ furls her sails, and _reason_ guides;
Whilst she who has that surest rudder lost,
Midst rocks and quicksands by the waves is tost;
No certain road she keeps, nor port can find,
Toss’d up and down by every wanton wind.”[301]
The struggles for ascendency between contending parties are not the growth
of a day; still less are they unstained by the effusion of blood. _Deluge_
was no very extravagant hyperbole to apply to such a carnage; for
independently of our knowing that _every_ visitation, whether by _fire_,
_water_, or _sword_, was so denominated by the Easterns, we have the
Scriptures themselves illustrating this use of the term in applying it to
the description at a far later period of an equally severe and no less
distressing catastrophe.
“Now, therefore, the Lord bringeth upon him the waters of the river,
strong and many, even the King of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall
come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks. And he shall
pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to
the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of
Thy land, O Immanuel.”[302]
But how, you ask, account for the marine strata, and other remains, found
within the earth’s recesses?
I answer they were there embedded and inanimate, before ever man was
placed above them as a denizen.
“It is clearly ascertained,” says Cuvier “that the oviparous quadrupeds
are found considerably earlier, or in more ancient strata than those of
the viviparous class. Thus the crocodiles of Harfleur and of England are
found immediately beneath the chalk. The great alligators and the
tortoises of Maestricht are found in the chalk formation, but these are
both marine animals. This earliest appearance of fossil bones seems to
indicate that dry lands and fresh waters must have existed before the
formation of the chalk strata; yet neither of that early epoch, nor during
the formation of the chalk strata, nor even for a long period afterwards,
do we find any fossil remains of _mammiferous land_ quadrupeds. We begin
to find the bones of the mammiferous sea animals, namely, of the lamantin
and of seals, in the course of shell limestone which immediately covers
the chalk strata in the neighbourhood of Paris. But no bones of the
mammiferous land quadrupeds are to be found in that formation; and
notwithstanding the most careful investigations I have never been able to
discover the slightest trace of this class excepting in the formations
which lie over the coarse limestone strata: but on reaching these more
recent formations, the bones of land quadrupeds are discovered in great
abundance.
“As it is reasonable to believe that shells and fish did not exist at the
period of the formation of the primitive rocks, we are also led to
conclude that the oviparous quadrupeds began to exist along with the
fishes, while the land quadrupeds did not begin to appear till long
afterwards, and until the coarse shell limestone had been already
deposited, which contains the greater part of our genera of shells,
although of quite different species from those that are now found in a
natural state. There is also a determinate order observable in the
disposition of those bones with regard to each other, which indicates a
very remarkable succession in the appearance of the different species.
“All the genera which are now unknown, as the Palæotheria, Anapalæotheria,
and with the localities of which we are thoroughly acquainted, are found
in the most ancient of the formations of which we are now treating, or
those which are placed directly over the coarse limestone strata. It is
chiefly they which occupy the regular strata which have been deposited
from fresh waters, or certain alluvial beds of very ancient formation,
generally composed of sand and rounded pebbles.
“The most celebrated of the unknown species belonging to known genera, or
to genera nearly allied to those which are known, as the fossil elephant,
rhinoceros, hippopotamos, and mastodon, are never found with the more
ancient genera, but are only contained in alluvial formations. Lastly, the
bones of species which are apparently the same with those that still
exist alive, are never found except in light and alluvial dispositions.”
From all which, this philosopher draws the following just conclusion,
namely:--“Thus we have a collection of facts, a series of epochs anterior
to the present time, and of which the successive steps may be ascertained
with perfect certainty, though the periods which intervened cannot be
determined with any degree of precision. These epochs form so many fixed
points, answering as rules for directing our inquiries respecting this
ancient chronology of the earth.”
To return--“God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before Me;
for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will
destroy them with the earth.”[303]
Now, we see that the earth has _not_ been destroyed, and _this single
circumstance, in itself_, ought to have been enough to show us that the
whole register was but figurative. The _raven_ and the _dove_ were
indispensable auxiliaries to the structure of the allegory: the former
typifies the _massacre_ that prevailed during the period of the contest;
and the latter, in its meek and its tender constancy, the invariable
attendant, besides, of _Venus_ and the _boat_, characteristically
pourtrays the overtures made for an accommodation, until, after a second
embassy, the _olive-branch_ of peace was saluted, and the cessation of
hostilities was the consequence.[304]
Behold, then, the folly of those dreamers who would make _Thebith_ so
called, as if the _ark_ had rested upon it! Why, sir, in the entire
catalogue of _local_ names, there is no one half so common as that of
_Thebith_ and _Thebæ_! And surely you will not claim for your _ideal_
man-of-war, in addition to other properties, that of _ubiquity_ also, by
making it perch upon all those places, at one and the same time!
No, these scenes have been all denominated from the form of religion which
they recognised, and of which the _Pith_, _Yoni_, or _sacred Boat_, was
the conventional sign: as the countries of _Phut_, that is, _But_, and
_Buotan_, were so designated likewise, from their adopting the _opposite_
symbol, namely, the _Budh_, _Phallus_, or _sacred Lingam_!
Perplexed in this entanglement, and tossed about in “a sea of
speculation,” Mr. Jacob Bryant, in some respects a clever man, after a
fatiguing cruise of somewhat more than half a century, fell at last a
victim in the general shipwreck.
“Your wise men don’t know much of navigation.”
The _Gentiles_, says he, worshipped Noah’s _ark_! Yes they did; but _not
in the sense in which he understood it_.[305]
Another _axiom_ of his is, that the _Deluge_ must have really happened,
because that the _tradition_ of it is _universal_! To this, also, I chime
in my affirmative response, and proclaim, yea. But the _tradition_ of the
_tree of knowledge_ is equally _universal_. And though the _ground work_
of _both occurred_, and was _substantively true_, yet was the
_description_ of _neither_ more than a graceful _allegory_; while the
salutary _alarm_ imparted under this guise, and the monitory _lesson_
suggested by its horrors, in _amusing_ the fancy, _edified_ it, at the
same moment, by keeping before it a _picture_ of that _spiritual
desolation_, which _sin_ leaves in the _citadel_ of the _soul_.[306]
“Moses,” says the apostle, “was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”[307]
Now Strabo assures us that the Egyptians of his day were as ignorant as he
was himself of the origin of their religion, of the import of their
symbols, and of their national history. They pretended to retain some
_evanescent_ traces thereof in the time of Diodorus; but so scrupulously
exact were they in the concealment of their tenour, that to pry into them,
profanely, was morally impossible.
Herodotus himself, who neglected no channel of information, found it no
easy matter to glean a few _initiatory_ scraps from them. And even these
were accompanied with such solemn denunciations, that his embarrassment is
betrayed when but alluding to their tendency.
If, during Moses’s residence at Pharaoh’s Court, his opportunities of
insight were greater, it is still self-evident that the accomplishments
which he obtained were more of a secular character than of a religious
cast--that the _courtier_ was the first object of the young princess’s
directions, and the qualifications of the _statesman_ her next ambition
for her charge. The _mysteries_ of the priests were too awful, and too
sanctified, to be debased to the routine of a schoolboy’s rehearsal; and
even when ripening age did bespeak a more chastened mind, the
communication of their contents was obscured by the interposition of an
almost impenetrable umbrage.
Thus palliated by types, Moses did, however, imbibe from the Egyptians all
the knowledge which they then possessed of the nature of their ceremonies;
and the record of the _Fall_, the _Deluge_, and the _Creation_ are the
direct transcripts of the instruction so conveyed. But though it is
undeniable, from their _symbols_, that the Egyptians must have been well
apprised of the _constitution_ of those rites, yet am I as satisfied as I
am of my physical motion, that the foldings of that _web_, in which they
were so mystically _doubled_, was lost to their grasp in the labyrinths of
antiquity.
Moses, therefore, could not have _learned_ from the Egyptians more than
the Egyptians themselves had _known_. He related the allegory as he had
_received_ it from them: and it is, doubtless, to his ignorance of its
_ambiguous_ interpretation, _accessible only through that language in
which it was originally involved_, that we are indebted for a
transmission, _so essentially Irish_.
The _Pish_-de-danaan dynasty which rose upon the ruins of the
_Tuath_-de-danaans, in _Iran_, was itself, in after ages, ejected from
that country. _Egypt_ was the retreat of their shattered fortunes; and
there, during their abode, under the name of the _Shepherd-kings_, they
erected the _Pyramids_, in honour of _Pith_, or _Padma_-devi, but at an
age long anterior to what may be presumed from Manetho.[308]
Previously, however, to their arrival in Egypt, Shinaar in Mesopotamia
afforded them an asylum. Here it was that Nimrod broke in:[309] and as I
have before but _transiently glanced_ at that circumstance, I shall now
revert to it with more precision.
Between the tenets of the _Pish_-de-danaans and those of their
_Tuath_-de-danaan predecessors, there was but a single point of
dissentient belief. The language, the customs, the manners and modes of
life of both were the same. To all intents and purposes they were one
identical people.
But as the former had imagined that the _Yoni_ alone was the author of
_procreation_, while the others claimed that honour for their own symbol,
the _Lingam_, an animosity ensued, which was not allayed even by the
consciousness, that _each_, secretly, worshipped the type of the _other’s_
creed.
The _goddess_, however, prevailed in the struggle, and her glories in Iran
were great and far spread. Monarchs bowed at the nod of her omnipotence,
and the earth swelled with the gestations of her praise.[310] “_Sed
ultima dies semper homini est expectanda._” A rude and a lawless swarm of
stragglers, headed by an adventurer of commanding abilities and determined
heroism, _deluged_, in turn, the _Boatmen_, or the _Noachidæ_,[311] and
swamped them in a _flood_, as _sanguinary_ and as _disastrous_ as that
which they had, themselves, before, brought upon the adversaries of their
zeal.
But it was not the _bloodshed_ of the scene that affected them half so
much as the _insult_ offered by the erection of the _Tower_![312] And as
no clue can be so adequate for the analysis of this _enigma_ as that which
they themselves have bequeathed,--for it was from the _Yavanas_ or
_Pish_-de-danaans that Moses had been taught the fact,--I shall place such
before your eyes, in all the eloquence of a self-interpreting dissyllable.
מנרל is the name by which the scriptural record perpetuates this
structure.[313] If you put this into English letters, and read them
regularly, from left to right, it will be _Lidgam_. But the Hebrews read
in the opposite direction, from right to left; and that is the very cause
of the appearance of the _d_ in the word; for as _Magnil_--reading
backwards--would produce a _cacophony_, the _n_ of the original was left
out, and _d_ substituted, making _Magdil_: reinstate, therefore, the _n_,
and enunciate the Hebrew word, as you would the Irish or the Sanscrit, and
it will not only unmask the _secret_ of this long-disputed edifice, but
_be_, _sound_, and _personate_, in all the nicety of accentuation,
_Lingam_, and thus prevent all further controversy about the character of
the _Tower_ of Babel.
“The waies through which my weary steps I guide,
In this researche of old antiquitie,
Are so exceeding riche, and long, and wyde,
And sprinkled with such sweet varietie,
Of all that pleasant is to eare and eye,
That I, nigh ravisht with rare thought’s delight,
My tedious travel quite forgot thereby;
And when I gin to feel decay of might,
It strength to me supplies and cheers my dulled spright.”[314]